“Down Bad” by Taylor Swift, Sunday, May 19, 2024

It starts with a single and maybe a B-side, then an EP of 4-6 songs. This is often followed by more singles and more EPs. Finally, we get the full-length studio record which may be reworked versions of the early singles and songs from the EP. These artists often struggle to fill a full concert set because they don’t have enough material. They often resort to playing covers of songs that influenced their early career. However, somewhere along the way, an artist, should they last, becomes prolific. The frequency of singles, EPs, and full albums increases. In the past when this happened, the artist had passed their radio prime. But today, we have artists like Drake and Taylor Swift in their prolific period and in their commercial prime. Sometimes artists get big enough to release whatever they want, and that's what has seemed to happen with the latest from Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department, released last month to record-breaking streaming numbers.

 

FUCK IT IF I CAN’T HAVE HIM. I remember saying something in one of my classes about how I didn’t care very much for many of EXO’s songs. I don’t remember the context, whether I was relating to a story or if I was just talking to students, but I do remember the response: “Be careful, Teacher. Don’t say that online.” K-pop fan groups are formidable forces as are the Beehive and the Swifties. This can even make honest reviews of their most recent works harrowing tasks for critics and music publications, let alone humble bloggers who want to offer nuanced criticism. Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world and she’s dealing with both celebrity billionaire problems and issues of love and breakups. Much of Swift’s latest offering, The Tortured Poets Department deals with the latter, making the album relatable to a greater percentage of listeners. But there is certainly a lot of celebrity intrigue packed within the lines of each song. Is this song about Joe Alwyn or Matty Healy? Then so many of the songs sound fictionalized with exotic places like Florida!!! and metaphors of murder going to “the slammer.” Critics asked last year if listeners were growing fatigued with Taylor Swift,  but when the album broke listener streaming records and littered a record number of Billboard’s Hot 100 spots, that criticism seems invalided for both diehards and casual listeners. But casually listening to the album for about a month, I feel like the album is more of a first draft that had the potential of being a poetic masterpiece.

LIKE I LOST MY TWIN. Taylor Swift is an artist with reverence for the album as the primary medium. Swift has released 11 studio albums of songs she has written or co-written. Besides her masterful wordplay, Swift crafts albums that are not somewhere between conceptual and a collection of songs. Common themes run through each album depending on what Taylor has been up to, often who she has dated. But in the middle of promoting several releases of her rerecorded albums and a billion-dollar tour, Swift announced that she would be releasing The Tortured Poets Department in her acceptance speech for winning Album of the Year at the 2024 Grammy’s for 2022’s Midnights. Yes, TTPD arrives within a normal 2-3 year album cycle for Swift as did Midnights, but with the rerecordings and the bonus content we get from them, I feel like I am not getting an opportunity to digest the albums at a normal pace. So what about an album that presumes its own brilliance? The Tortured Poets Department is a bit of a rough listen. Its 31 tracks make a daunting task and the Jack Antonoff/Aaron Dessner production is starting to feel like a repeat of everything she’s done before. Swift is truly in her imperial era and she has a fan base that will follow her wherever she goes. But this Swifty vs. non-Swifty binary doesn’t leave much room for listeners to decide if the music or lyrics are actually good. Right now, it feels like an emo album released 20 years after the emo kids graduated from high school. And today’s song, “Down Bad” is full of teenage petulance straight out of the angsty aughts. The details about Matty, Joe, London, and “The Tortured Men’s Club” all scream to be fleshed out --but maybe it’s me as the listener that’s being judged by my lack of attention span.

Read “Down Bad” by Taylor Swift on Genius.